Art: Pennsylvania Romantic

At 37, Walter Stuempfig has earned a niche for himself as one of the nation's foremost "romantic" painters (TIME, Dec. 12, 1949). The subject of much of his romanticism: the streets and suburban landscapes of his native Pennsylvania. Last week the prize exhibit of Stuempfig's latest Manhattan show was a big, misty view of a town he has been painting for two decades.

Norristown (wrongly identified as Conshohocken in the exhibition catalogue), ten miles from Stuempfig's Chestnut Hill home, is far from romantic to the unpracticed eye. But by painting it from a vantage...